Sacred 2 - Delayed to Sept 2008

December 26th, 2007, 13:11

In a lengthy open letter at the official site, Ascaron has announced a delay for Sacred 2 to September 2008, despite the recent PR ramp:

12-25-2007
Dear friends and fans of SACRED 2  Fallen Angel
We would have preferred to announce the delay to the release date at an earlier stage, but there are many reasons why we could only inform you of it now.
A longer development process requires maximum performance in all areas, and a large number of people are involved in that process. In a crucial decision making phase it is impossible to communicate important news directly  we hope you understand.
An extension of the development process was necessary in order to ensure that we realize all the development plans and ship both PC and Xbox 360 versions with the best possible quality and stability.
A game as complex as SACRED 2  Fallen Angel, with its many technical innovations, requires extensive testing and balancing in all areas. In certain areas of development we often had to make our way into uncharted territory when it came to implementing the new technologies which are required to make SACRED 2  Fallen Angel the game that we set out to make. This inevitably led to situations where satisfactory realization of a vision took a bit longer than originally planned.
So, what to do? Scrap features? No, definitely not!
Patch with a patch as only a patch can patch? No, that's also out of the question!
The most important thing, after all, is the game. Fortunately for everyone, we are in the enviable position where all involved parties (share holders, banks and distributors) agreed to our plans for continuing to develop SACRED 2  Fallen Angel according to our vision and create the best action RPG possible.
We would like to take this opportunity to express our sincere thanks to our partners for their support and belief in both Ascaron and in SACRED 2  Fallen Angel.
We'd like to ask our fans and friends for their understanding, and we hope that any potential disappointment is outweighed by looking forward to a superb SACRED 2  Fallen Angel release in September 2008. Indeed, it is quite likely that many of you will have a chance to beta test the game.
Shortly before the release we'd like to make a demo available to the public and, who knows, maybe we will have a surprise ready for the Games Convention 2008 Watch this space.
You can rest assured that the Ascaron team is pulling out all the stops to deliver a SACRED 2  Fallen Angel game that not only meets the high expectations, but blows those expectations clean out of the water!
Season's greetings and a happy New Year to one and all
The Ascaron Team

Originally Posted by magerette
Better they delay it than release it full of bugs—wasn't the original Sacred a bit of a bugfest at release?( I only played it patched.)

I don't think bugs were the biggest problem - each patch brought changes to balancing iirc. And after 1.08 (or around this number) the drops became reasonable, which is very important for an action RPG with lots of loot.

I have to say I'm not surprised. I never got Sacred to run properly. On WinXP I got CTD's and stutters, no matter what I did. I just gave it another shot on Vista x64, and got a message stating that "it's not designed" for 64-bit OS's. Some Googling turned up a no-CD crack that allowed the game to start up — only to fade to black immediately on starting a campaign.

Oh, and the uninstaller didn't uninstall everything.

This on the latest version.

In other words, I get the feeling that Ascaron can't code their way out of a wet paper bag, never mind releasing a game on schedule.

And what's even worse was that the makers of Armalion - which was later re-made into Sacred - was - as I heard - known to be notorious for bugs as well.

So - if something of them remained in the game …

—  Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius  and a lot of courage  to move in the opposite direction. (E.F.Schumacher, Economist, Source)

Originally Posted by Prime Junta
In other words, I get the feeling that Ascaron can't code their way out of a wet paper bag, never mind releasing a game on schedule.

Actually, as I understand it, they bought an already-part-way developed product and tried to change it from a Realms of Arkania follow up RPG to an aRPG, with obviously mixed results. However, they stuck with it and pumped out quite a few patches, even releasing an expansion for free (Sacred Plus) as a "thank you" to their customers. The problems you're experiencing with the latest version and XP are, well, very odd, assuming the XP install is 32 and not 64. I've never had any problems with Sacred running on XP. Did you get Sacred Plus?